Pros
Pros: After reading the reviews, I felt it was necessary to offer a contrary and –more importantly – an accurate point of view. Sad to say, but an organization as robust as the operation run at Chewy.com has no time for the whiners or people who have no clear understanding the true values that serfdom brings. The reality of the matter is that the customers are the highest priority and shortly thereafter the next priority is the profit margin. If any of the other reviewers understood how business works, they would understand that lack of raises, lack of sick days or no more than an industry-minimum 5-day vacation annually is just what’s good for business. I’ve never witnessed a management team more creative or determined to find non-priority tasks to shift the work burden on their staff. It is expertly done, and creates the environment that is essential to having a top-tier reputation among customers in the service industry. Economics says that you just can’t treat the staff AND the employees favorably. You pick and choose. And by the looks of the overworked staff and the soaring profits, then I say that business is good. And let’s discuss management some more: Managers at Chewy make sure people are on point. Sometimes they use tried-and-true methods that one might call elementary tactics, such as publicly ridiculing people for minutiae or making their real feelings about the staff known through informal dissemination. Now losers would call that gossip. I call that strategy. Management is about getting to the finish line. So what if three-quarters of the team can’t trust their neighbors because they wisely choose to spy for the winning team? No “I” in team? Sure, but there’s no “team” in MVP either; however, there is an “M” – it stands for Management.
Cons
Cons: 1) Not enough turnover. One thing I can’t stand to see at the workplace is personnel who’ve been around long enough to remember when things are good. When you bring in rabble to answer the phones, you don’t want them to know immediately that they are getting a raw deal. That knowledge should only be revealed when they are too broken in spirit to quit. 2) Not enough redundancy. When a staff member has the nerve to call out for, say an illness, or car accident or death, the management team too efficiently handles these requests by having the employee call the shift lead (on the current shift), then contact the lead (on the shift in question) and then the director of the department for permission. Very disappointing. You train performers by making them jump through as many hoops as possible prior to physical collapse. If the management team could find a way to have more of the team contacted for these requests, then this resolves two issues: 1) it creates enough fake work to have the leads busy enough to not help with the call volume and 2) it makes the staff request time off for dead relatives they actually care about. In a 24/7 call center, money never sleeps. Quote me on that. 3) Not enough cliques. I think the most effective element in the workplace is fear. An environment that creates paranoia produces the most effective results in keeping people in line – think of High School and Prison. What those two character-defining institutions have in common is a detriment to learning and cliques – an endless amount of gang formations. The employees should feel like guppies swimming through shark tanks, always in fear of being the next meal. Now, the cliques at Chewy are not so much like Bloods and Crips, but more like the Jets and Sharks – with slightly less dancing. But what they lack in physical intimidation, they make up in the ability to be judgmental and to ostracize new people. Now, clearly, that has my approval. I just worry that there still may be gaps of a humanity as available options that are just counter to the program. A full and silent break room of a staff in the fetal position is a picture worth a thousand words.